Foolishness

Now that the 1 has flipped over to 2 on my novelty “Numbers In Strict Numerical Sequence-A-Day Calendar” I can call your attention to a couple of goofs I had going. It was an unusually active April Fool’s Day for me…so much so that my Hand-Blackening Soap (“Indistinguishable from the genuine article…guaranteed ice-breaker”) remained in its original packaging and will be stored away for another year.

First, my pal Jason iChatted me with a preview of what he had planned for his TV site, TeeVee.net. On April 1, TeeVee would become Radeeo, the blog that would have existed in its place if television had never been invented and radio had remained the single dominant form of entertainment and information throughout the 20th century.

I thought it was a fabulous wheeze, and it immediately inspired a brilliantly funny idea. And when I completely and spectacularly failed to figure out how to make that idea work, I went with my second idea.

This Radeeo piece really was going to be it for April Fool’s Day. But at a little after midnight on April 1, I impulsively typed something into my Twitter window and clicked “Update”:

A few seconds later, I saw that message in my Twitter feed. I immediately thought “Oh. Oh, dear…I seem to have started an April Fool’s prank that might inconvenience me for most of the whole rest of the day.”

Well, Twitter seemed to be a neat medium for perpetrating an ongoing April Fool’s gag. Fortunately, the timing worked out so that by the time I had to “leave for the airport,” it was time for me to go to bed, and my flight wouldn’t “touch down” until after I’d woken up.

So I spent the day publishing a nice, tidy little serial adventure, in about four dozen 140-character chapters. The first post starts right about here. Twitter posts appear in stack order, so start at the bottom of the page and click the “Newer” button to get to the next installments.

I prolly ought to archive them here in proper order…but it’s late and I still need to finish a Sun-Times column.

Thoroughly enjoyed it, although I must admit that “Ringo” made me think we were heading for a “Why aren’t the Beatles on iTunes?” confrontation with Sir Steve. Still, it was a pitch perfect use of the medium, thanks to Andy’s gift for precision.